High performance optical systems, such as for cinematography, require superior polychromatic optical performance and athermal characteristics. Previously, the design of large aperture, high performance, long focal length lens systems for the visible waveband has been limited by practical issues concerning length, volume, weight, cost and the availability of large dimensional sizes of raw material, especially glasses that exhibit abnormal dispersion characteristics. Catadioptric lenses do offer a significant reduction in overall length but they have the disadvantage of producing donut shaped images of out of focus point objects which, in many applications including cinematography, high definition television ("HDTV") and advanced television ("ATV") is unnatural and highly distracting or even disturbing to a viewer. In comparison, telephoto lenses offer reasonable compactness in terms of length and volume but demand multiple lens elements in the front objective grouping. These elements, apart from producing large weight, necessitate the use of abnormal dispersion glass or crystalline materials which are high in cost with limited availability or which may even be unavailable in large sizes. Aspheric surfaces can be used in the front objective grouping to reduce the quantity of lens elements required but aspheric surfaces are difficult to manufacture, are high in cost and do not eliminate the need for abnormal dispersion materials. Liquid optical materials which exhibit abnormal and highly abnormal dispersion characteristics, sometimes referred to as abnormal dispersion liquids (ADLs), offer an alternative to using abnormal dispersion glasses and crystals. However, liquid lens elements need to be supported and sealed by solid elements, for example, between two glass elements in a glass/liquid/glass cell which can be heavy in weight, especially when located in the front objective grouping because of the large diameter of the elements. If two compensating ADLs are employed, then the weight will be increased even more by the two glass/liquid/glass elements. In addition, liquid optical materials tend to exhibit large changes in refractive index with temperature changes, as compared to solid lens materials, which causes defocusing as well as loss of chromatic aberration control thus making the liquid lens system unusable at elevated and depressed temperatures.